FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to a steam-turbine plant having a number of pressure stages disposed on a common turbine shaft.
In a steam-turbine plant, a condenser connected downstream of the steam turbine is normally disposed below the steam turbine. In addition, the steam-turbine plant includes a multiplicity of preheaters of a preheating section for preheating condensate or feedwater conducted in the steam cycle of the steam turbine. In order to connect the preheaters to one another and to the steam turbine, a correspondingly complex piping system is provided. U.S. Pat. No. 5,404,724, for example, discloses a steam-turbine plant having a multiplicity of such preheaters. Due to the type of construction of the steam turbine and due to the large number of structural components, such a steam-turbine plant is considerably expensive in terms of construction and requires considerable space. In addition, the assembly cost when erecting such a steam-turbine plant is especially high, particularly since the steam turbine disposed above the condenser necessitates a complicated supporting structure.
A steam-turbine plant having a number of pressure stages and having a condenser disposed on the downstream side in the axial direction of the turbine shaft has been disclosed in European Patent Application 0 206 135 A1, corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 4,653,277.